909. The Honeycomb
If thou hast found an honeycomb,Eat thou not all, but taste on some:For if thou eat'st it to excess,That sweetness turns to loathsomeness.Taste it to temper, then 'twill beMarrow and manna unto thee.
Words in this poem
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
909. The Honeycomb is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #22421; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Herrick, 909. The Honeycomb, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/909-the-honeycomb.html, id L05827.
Form and metre
909. The Honeycomb is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is dactylic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.2 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in dactylic trimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABBCC honeycombA · someA · excessB · loathsomenessB · beC · theeC
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against dactylic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| If thou hast found an honeycomb, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Eat thou not all, but taste on some: | 8 | ········ |
| For if thou eat'st it to excess, | 8 | ······/· |
| That sweetness turns to loathsomeness. | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| Taste it to temper, then 'twill be | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Marrow and manna unto thee. | 8 | /˘·/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.